1906 AND ALL THAT
Remember that in 1906 we did not have Al-Qaida. The 1906 version of
the War on Terror targeted Anarchists and any imperially oppressed
people foolhardy enough to resist. Nascent Zionism was around.
Anarchists wanted regime change in every country; Zionists were more
for 'Freedom in one Country' (yet to be defined).
In fact by 1906 anarchism was no longer a threat to anyone. However
the idea of 'propaganda by deed' has survived and has been taken up by
other movements. Aum Shibryoko tried, but the Hamburg cell of Al-Qaida
succeeded in bringing 'propaganda by deed' to apocalyptic extremes. Of
course terrorists have never been any match for the state in terms of
mass slaughter. For the inculcation of real nastiness and blood lust we
must examine the school system. The combination of religion and state
is a particularly well tried path to brutality. Protestantism in
contemporary Northern Ireland and State Shinto in Japan both used
propaganda images of small boys agressively poised and willing to beat
the hell out of anyone who opposed the ambitions of the state.
By 1906 religion was almost everywhere in decline. People might go
to church or visit the temple, but this was as often a way of asserting
national or tribal identity rather than going in for the philosophy of
the religion.
One of the World's most modern states was France. Pasteur had done
much to improve process industries and medicine. His work did not
prevent thousands dying of disease on the Panama Canal project, but the
ideas were there.
In 1906 Pierre Curie got run over by a horse drawn cart carrying
military provisions. He died from his injuries but he left his wife
Marie to carry on his illustrius career. The pair had purified radium
in a shack in the grounds of a Paris university. By 1906 France was
itself an energy poor country. It had lost much of its coalfields in
the disasterous war of 1870-71. France remains energy poor. Today,
amongst nations, France has the highest proportion of nuclear power
generation in the World. Just one hundred years on France still retains
its status as a 'Long Established Great Power' by having nuclear
weapons and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Back in Pierre
Curie's day there was an international system which consisted of
different treaties signed by different people to settle problems on an
ad-hoc basis. The Nobel Peace Prize for 1906 had gone to Theodore
Roosevelt for his efforts as referee in the bloody Russo-Japanese war
of 1904-05. This war had seen thousands of conscript troops attempting
to storm concrete protected machine gun posts through barbed wire and
minefields. Japan had for some years devoting up to 40% of its GNP on
miltarisation, a figure similar to that of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.
At that time no one was willing to call Japan a failed state, but the
economic indicators pointed that way. Russian anti-semitism was fuelled
by stories that Jewish controlled banks had lent money to Japan.
The 'Traditional Great Powers' all had the most terrible social
problems at home. Emigration, sometimes enforced, was seen as a means
of treating anti-social behaviour. The French had a system of overseas
prisons in South America and the Pacific. The English had turned a
whole continent into a prison. Russia had a great periphery for exiling
trouble makers.
Despite the social problems French science and engineering were
widely admired and the early 1900s saw an influx of Asian students.
Alumni included Ho Chi Minh and Dzu En Lai. This happened mostly during
and after the First World War.
England also had science and culture, and at that time it was much
more successful than France. England had apparently inexhaustible
supplies of coal but the powers in the admiralty were interested in a
switch to oil for its battleships. An investor called D'Arcy had
already spent a considerable amount of money searching for oil in Iran.
Winston Churchill wanted to 'Join up the British Empire'.
In 1906 the USA had itself become an 'Inheritor of Empires'. It had
taken over the moribund 'Panama Canal Project' from the French after
first securing a slice of Colombia, and then inherited tutelage of Cuba
and the Philippines from Spain. American doctors were also making great
advances in medicine. Dangerous experiments were made on human
patients, often the very poor. Militarized medicine began in America.
The Panama Canal Zone represented a well run colony. The Americans had
also invented Airplane technology, and , for executions, the electric
chair.
1906 saw the San Francisco Earthquake. When the local China town was
devastated there were moves to buy up the land and move the chinese
elsewhere.
THE STATE OF NATIONS IN 1906
Afghanistan 1906
Borderland between Imperial Russia, British India and China. Ruled
by magnates and pensioners.
Austria-Hungary 1906
Multi national empire. Willing to inherit anything from decaying
Ottoman Empire.
Britain 1906
Britain had earned a reputation as a temporary home for high profile
trouble makers (E.g. Voltaire). It also had its local troubles
with Ireland, which was still an integral part of Britain at the
time.
China 1906 Anti-capitalist
Seeking to modernise.
A failed state.
Germany 1906 A successful new state. Militarised.
By 1906 Siemens alone employed 100000 workers.
India 1906
The milk cow of Britain.
Mahatma Gandhi and his supporters held that cheap British imports of
clothing and other manufactured goods had reduced the economy of India
to utter penury by killing off traditional Indian manufacturing
industries. Nowadays globalisation has brought job losses to Britain,
via outsourcing of back office work.
Indonesia 1906
Mostly run by the Dutch.
Iran 1906
Ruled by losers. Iran had recently lost vast areas to Russia.
Italy 1906 Recent arrival as a state.
Willing to inherit bits of Ottoman Empire.
Japan 1906 Embracing capitalism.
A world Power. It had just defeated Russia.
Korea 1906 A failed state.
Inherited by Japan.
Kurdistan 1906
Borderland between Ottoman Turkey and Iran.
Philippines 1906
Recently acquired by America.
Russia 1906.
Previous winner against Turkey.
Had just lost a war to Japan.
Joint shareholder of Failed State, Poland.
Spain 1906
Previous owner of Cuba and Philippines.
Had recently lost a war with the USA.
Thailand 1906
Pendulum between British Burma and French Indo China.
Monarchy seeking modernisation as fast as necessary.
Turkey 1906
'Sick Man of Europe'. Anti-capitalist.
USA 1906
Inheritor of empires. Electrocuted people to death.
1906 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
Theodore Roosevelt. Arbiter of conflict between Russia and Japan.
The USA had had good experience in keeping old style imperialists
out of East Asia. America could be seen as an honest broker between
rival European powers who all wanted the Philippines.
Japan and Russia had gone to war over the exploitation of Manchuria
and Korea. The war was mostly faught on Chinese soil with little
consideration for the people living in the war zone. Japan was the
first Asian country to become Americanized. Already. Back in 1906 ?
The Japanese had schools, battleships, and a popular press. There
was plenty to write about. American ideas of democracy were available
to at least an educated elite, but also literacy was encouraged for
the masses. Japan was not 100% American. They wanted to keep the
Royal Family (recently arrived in fact) so they also looked up to
the British who had a long tradition of a Royal Family.
New arrivals as great powers included Germany (Bismark) and Italy
(Garibaldi). Japan itself had seen the great impetus for reform
and modernisation come from the 'Black Ships' of Captain Perry. Japanese
society could absorb most positive aspects of American culture while
rejecting the worst. Christian missionaries were generally rejected
although some of their zeal for 'civilising pagan nations' was simply
translated to zeal for modernising Asia in a Japanese image.
Roosevelt got the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing order out of
chaos. The Japanese kept Korea, but Russia was expelled from China.
The Japanese were only to be allowed in China as equal competitors
with other powers such as Germany, France, America and England. They
would not be allowed to inherit too much of the former Russian zone
although they were established as part owners of Sakhalin Island.
Spain, Turkey and Russia were all losers now, while the new tigers,
Germany, Japan and Italy had been flexing their muscles.
Roosevelt was from an elite that knew all about high budget
Peace Conferences. Treaties were signed in places like Berlin, London,
Paris and Vienna. The real elite knew the dangers of imperialism,
but in a rather academic sense: Edward Gibbon had assigned militarism
as one of the root causes of the decline of the Roman Empire. The
control of the military by politicians was seen as a key republican
virtue by many of those educated in the European classic languages
Greek and Latin. Imperialism was percieved as a sort of ever present
danger which could lead some modern Caesar to cross some sort of
Rubicon and endanger the liberties and republican virtues of the
modern state.
Roosevelt had been a cheerleader for imperialism during America's
own venture to sort out (smash) the problems of a decaying empire.
Thousands of American troops had subected the Philipinos to an
increasingly brutal conflict at the turn of the century (1898-1903).
American tactics had included the burning of villages with fire engines
adapted to spray petrol instead of water, the casual shooting of
curfew violators, and water torture to extract information from
prisoners. Since there were no airforces at the time the terror
bombing role was assigned to the gunners of battleships who could
shell coastal cities.
The main Philippino rebel leader, Aguinaldo had courted the Americans
during the last years of Spanish rule in Manila, and he, like many
other Philipinos had cheered when Dewey's squadron defeated the Spanish
fleet in Manila Bay during 1898. The Americans had paid the Spanish
some 20 million dollars for infrastructure in the subsequent peace
treaty (Paris). Philipino representatives were excluded from any
talks about the settlement. Most of the people at peace conferences
were quite racist during those days.
America's 1900 presidential election campaign saw McKinley run
against a fundamentalist, prohibitionist democrat who had reservations
about the war in the Philippines. Both parties vied for the christian
vote. The imperialists got endorsement from the pope and the missionary
societies for their civilising mission in the Far East. The
anti-imperialist camp organised public meetings and they got the
endorsement of illuminati from the legal and academic establishments.
Some anti-imperialists even thought they could win the 1900 election.
Theodore Roosevelt became president following the assassination
of McKinley during the great exposition at Buffalo in 1902. An
anarchist called Czolgosz shot the president after lining up to
shake hands with the great man. All of this did not deter America
from its civilising mission in the Far East.
In fact the Americans lost few men in subjugating the Philippines.
There were only about 3000 combat losses in five years. Disease was
not such a killer as in earlier campaigns. American medical schools
were already producing many of the world's best doctors. Nineteenth
century chemistry and imperialistic expansion saw a whole lot of
exciting developments in the conquest of tropical diseases. The
Americans were sorting the problems of disease in Panama so that they
could get the canal built. Total environmental control was the
answer. Get rid of bugs and rubbish, and disease will go away.
1906-2006 CENTURY OF ENERGY
The Century of Energy starts off with the death of Nobel Prize
winner Pierre Curie. One hundred years later we see a nuclear powered
France and America desperate to intervene anywhere to secure oil
supplies against the advice of a concerted academic and scientific
lobby at home. Roosevelt's Peace Prize settled nothing. There was no
nuclear club in 1906. The great powers set limits on battleships then.
Nowadays they set limits on nuclear weapons. They can also distinguish
between clean ond dirty powers by going along with the Kyoto emissions
protocol.
If the nineteenth century was the Century of Opium, then the
twentieth century could be said to be the Century of Oil. 1906 sees the
ending of an era when India and China were locked together in the
deadly embrace of the opium trade, orchestrated by the remnants of the
British East India Company. The British drank tea from China bought
with opium planted in India and managed by an oppressively policed
monopoly which forced the Indian farmers to produce the commodity. The
monopoly had the support of the British military machine in opening up
the markets of China for it's produce. In fact China was quite capeable
of producing it's own opium but for some reason it seemed more
profitable for local merchants to import rather than rely on home
sourcing.
In the twentieth century the so called 'Carbon Club' consisting of
Texans and Arab sheikhs or dictators amongst others, continued the same
sort of trading practices where whole countries were for sale. The
Carbon Club also included lots of British and Dutch people because
Shell and BP are first class oil companies with a long history and many
episodes of record profits.
From the 1990s the Carbon Club has acquired ideological enemies.
These enemies say that burning carbon is changing the Earth's climate
in a disadvantageous fashion. Sea levels are expected to rise, and
reduce places such as London and Bangladesh to uninhabitable swamps.
New Orleans has already tasted this trend (Hurricane Katrina 2005).
Ideological opposition to the Carbon Club is highly factionalised.
People working in university departments such as geography, ecology and
economics are still allowed to voice opposition in the press. At the
same time it is hard to gain popularity by promising to curtail energy
use. In the internet age it is possible to find who is in the carbon
club. Natural Resources Defence Council
The 1960s saw the emergence of a new chapter of the Carbon Club.
OPEC, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, was dominated
by big producing countries. It appeared to be a forum where national
governments could talk on equal terms with the large oil companies of
the West. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran were all countries which
had experienced colonialism and imperialism. The Americans had
encouraged intergovernmental co-operation between Middle Eastern states
by setting up an organisation called CENTO or Central Treaty
Organisation. This was to butress the Free World against the dangers of
Communism (Soviet Russia). In fact the government technocrats of the
biggest oil exporters were in favour of centrally planned economies
with Soviet style five year plans. Iran developed both a motor industry
and a nuclear industry in the days of the Shah Pahlavi regime.
Japan was never a top member of the 'Carbon Club'. It's weak status
was exposed in 1941 when US oil sanctions prompted a military response.
Japan's action in 1941 caught western military commanders by surprise
and South East Asia changed hands in about 100 days. The next 1200 days
saw the main Japanese cities reduced to rubble.
Expulsion from the Carbon Club is a serious matter.
Japan was expelled in 1941.
Iraq was expelled in 1991.
America would also like to expel Venezuela, and indeed the strikes
which were meant to bring down the Chavaz government were an attempt to
hit the oil sector.
When Iraq was expelled, Iraq was a large exporter. It suffered ten
years of import sanctions on the nuts and bolts which sustain a
functioning economy. In the end the Americans conducted a pre-emptive
attack. The attack could almost be the result of an administrative
muddle. Saudi Arabia was a fully paid up member of the Carbon Club but
its expulsion was never on the table. Iran and Libya were good second
class members of the Carbon Club, because they retain relationships
with former colonial partners.
The story of the 9/11 attacks on America put young Saudis aboard the
suicide planes. These people were described as 'uncontrolleable
elements' who had fallen under the spell of Osama Bin Laden and had
agreed to his well publicised 'Jihad' against 'Crusaders and Zionists'
and implicitly a jihad against anyone who disagreed with Osama's
precise interpretation of 'Jihad'. In fact Bin Laden is an established
family company in Arabia, and its family members will have diverse
interests including indroctinating people to be the consumers. Wage
your Jihad with lung cancer by smoking our cigarettes ! Jihad against
your drug addiction, but you must get addicted first! Jihad for the
hydrogen economy !
Countries with large coal supplies were the founder members of the
Carbon Club. Britain, Germany, Russia, Austria Hungary and the USA all
developed their coal reserves early on. Europe had plenty of workers,
but the USA was resource rich and labour scarce at this time. Much
human and animal labour had already been replaced by machines. In much
of Europe there was a surplus of people. Mechanisation combined with
imperialism had in fact exported unemployment. The nascent trade
unions, in some cases encouraged by the ruling classes, had managed to
gain certain rights, but usually as members of some sort of
imperialistic venture which would oppress other people.
The apex of the old Carbon Club was the battleship industry. Britain
and America were clear leaders. Battleships required lots of high
specification steel. Bismark had remarked on building a country on
'Blood and Iron'. He meant the iron of modern armaments which can
subdue any opposition. The best wars were to be those where a foreign
city was bombarded from the sea until regime change was occurred.
The Coal Belt of Northern Europe stretches from England, through
Northern France and Germany then via Poland to Russia. In 1906 Germany
was contiguous from the North Sea to the Eastern Baltic and included
most of what is now Poland. Germany therefore enjoyed vast reserves of
coal and steel.
Mass transport was better than individual transport at that time.
This facilitated the outings of paramilitary youth movements such as
the boy scouts and quasi-militaristic marching bands that remain a
contemporary feature of Northern Ireland in 2005. Rather than hanging
about on street corners the youth of Europe were being indoctrinated in
patriotic values in preparation for the coming great war. The ruling
classes were determined that patriotism should motivate people more
than class war. The press could help in this. Newspaper competition
meant that there could be a platform from diverse views ranging from
annihilation of inferior races by machine gun and high explosive to
improving the lot of inferior races by combating corruption and the
slave trade in colonial administrations. Few questioned the right to
colonial rule.
Study of the tables show that India and China are both huge
producers of coal. Saudi Arabia remains the single largest source of
oil. Coalmining is dangerous and dirty work, but China and India are
countries where workers have few rights. Saudi Arabia has a poor human
rights record. The Khodarovsky trial in Russia is an example a state
versus carbon club clash; sheer hubris.
TYRANTS
Mao The book loving bully. Jung Chang, Jon Halliday
Stalin
Hitler Ian Kershaw
Pol Pot
Kim Il Sung Maybe a pawn of Mao
Saddam Hussein Maybe just a pawn.
TERRIBLE AND BLOODY BATTLES 1906-2005
1914 Tannenberg
The Marne
1915 Gallipoli The making of Mustafa Kemel
1916 The Somme Celebrated in Ulster.
1940 Battle of France Sucessful for Germany
Battle of Britain Air battle
1941 Pearl Harbour
Battle for Moscow.
1942 Fall of Singapore
Churchill wanted 'fight to last man'.
Battle of Midway.
US Navy sinks Japanese carriers.
1942-43 Battle of Stalingrad
1943 Kursk. Greatest evenly matched tank battle.
1944 D-day landings
1945 Okinawa
1946-49 Manchuria
1948 Battles for Israel.
1950-53 Seoul, Inchon, Pusan. Korean war.
1953 Dien Bien Phu
1968? Tet Offensive
1972 Battles for Dacca and East Pakistan.
1982 Battle of the Falklands
1986-88 Battle of the Cities.
Rocket attacks on Baghdad and Tehran
1991 Battle of Vukovar
1992 Battle for Kuwait
1994 Battle for Kigali, Ruwanda.
1995 First battle of Grozny.
1999 Air war over Kosovo.
2000 Second battle of Grozny.
2003 American advance on and capture of Baghdad
2004 Falluja
WATERSHED WARS
Eritrea Ethiopia 1960s-1990s
The Alps: Tyrol 1915-18
Balkan mountain ranges Numerous occassions
Andes Cocaine wars
Taurus, Zagros etc. Kurdish groups.
Caucuses Kurds, Armenians, Chechens etc.
Pamir Afghanistan
Himalaya Kashmir, Nepal, Tibet.
East Himalaya Burma or Myanmar. Japan versus British.
The Kashmir war entered a particularly idiotic phase when regular
military troops were sent to construct a front line in the 'death
zone' above 6000 meters (1990s). Altitude sickness and frostbite made
conditions hard for the troops. This conflict also tainted Rajiv
Gandhi with the 'Bofors Scandal' where there were allegations of
bribery in the placing of a contract to buy howitzers. These howitzers
had to be specially powerful so that the Indian army could bombard
poverty stricken villages at the other side of enormously high
mountain ranges.
SIGNIFICANT EARTHQUAKES 1906 2006
1906 San Francisco Quake + fires
1908 Messina Quake + Tsunami 30000
1923 Kanto, Japan Quake + fires 143000
1976 Tangshan, China High mortality 250000
1995 Kobe, Japan Quake + fires 6000
2004 Offshore Sumatra Devastating Tsunamis 230000
2005 Pakistan/Kashmir Quake > 70000
Iran has suffered numerous high mortality earthquakes. The political
impact of earthquakes depends on the strength of the state. The fires
following the Kanto quake were blamed on Korean immigrants to Japan,
and the authorities used the resulting mob rule as an excuse to clamp down
on minorities including Japanese leftists. After the Tangshan quake
chairman Mao, on his death bed, exorted the masses to anathematize his
regular political enemies including Deng Xio Ping.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE 1906-2006
Mary Stopes Eugenics
Indira Gandhi Machine gunned by bodyguards.
Qiang Qing Incited cultural revolution.
Madam Curie Double Nobel laureate.
Margaret Thatcher Great leap backwards for workers.
Leni Riefenstahl Nazi publicist.
Hasina Bangladeshi leader.
Kalida Zia Bangladeshi leader.
Condolezza Rice Carbon Club Mascot.
Barbara Amiel Bon vivant wife of Conrad Black
Karol Wojlycza Celebrity pope. Hammer of the Communists.
Prince Talal Saudi. #5 rich man in world.
Ahmed Shah Masood Christ like figure
Simon Wiesenthal Hunter of 'desk nurderers'.
Linus Pauling Double Nobel Laureate.
Yasser Arafat Palestine
SOME DOUBLE CROSSES AND BETRAYALS 1906-2006
Most soviet from 1905-50. Stalin purges.
Greek Civil War
Mao's Reckless behaviour in Korean war.
Mafia suppression of leftists in Italy
Undermining of the UN by American anti-communists.
Betrayal of Chinese CP in Malaya.
Shah of Iran.
1990s Yemeni civil war.
American support for Afghani Mujehaddin.
Central Asian Cotton Industry. Drying of the Aral sea.
Sporadic and inconsistent sponsorship of Kurdish militia.
IMPORTANT PROCESS INDUSTRIES 1906-2005
Ammonia. Haber. Wife suicide. Chased out of his country. Cambridge.
BUNA. Nazi Artificial rubber project. Primo Levi as witness.
Fission. UF6. Oppenheimer and General Groves. Hanford to Bandar
Abbas.
Oil Refining. Abadan, Rotterdam, Texas, Shanghai etc.
Anthrax, plague etc. Unit 731, Harbin, Manchuria.
SASOL. Oil from coal. Auschwitz, South Africa.
Processed food. Witness: Rachel Carson. Cancer victim.
Also Polly the Cat. She eats processed food.
Humans. Children -> zombies via mass media and propaganda.
Brainwashing is big industry (always ?).
Business schools produce agents of imperialism.
Fermenting. Why are modern brewery magnates so right wing?
Chaim Weizmann introduced fermentation to produce
acetone. Lloyd George needed the acetone to make
explosives in the first world war. Chaim's reward
was the State of Israel. It's ironic that people
claim acetone peroxide was used to blow up London
commuters on 7/7/2005.
Data Processing. IBM. Process money.
Decisive changes in life. Could enable socialism.
Actuarial science and futures markets seek to process risk.
Cold war DP applications include listing subversives.
The success or failure of this type of industry may be explained in
terms of the second law of thermodynamics.
GREAT MASSACRES OF THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY
[1] Armenian Genocide 1917-20
Controversial? Some Turks say the Armenians massacred them.
Talaat, Enver, Mustafa Kemel.
[2] Stalin's purges. 1936-41, 1944-53.
[3] Rape of Nan Jing. Historian Irene Chang described it.
Like Primo Levy, she died of suspected suicide.
[4] Nazi Holocaust. 1941-44.
- you can be sent to jail for being stupid now.
- Primo Levi described some of it. Capitalism kills.
[5] Fire bombing. 1943-5. Germany and Japan.
[6] Battle of Manila. 1945.
[7] Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[8] South Asia partition massacres. 1946-48?
Described by Salman Rushdie. Midnight's Children.
[9] Massacre of 'Communists / Chinese'. Indonesia, 1975-76.
Establishment of Suharto regime. American approval.
[10] Pol-Pot regime. Cambodia. 1973-79.
Ideological massacres. You become a 'new man' or else you die.
[11] Bophal, India. Union Carbide factory poisons thousands.
Technically not carried out by armed forces. Accident in the
'War on Bugs'.
[12] Srebenica. 1996.
[13] Ruwanda 1994.
1066 AND ALL THAT: A SATIRE ON HISTORY TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS.
'Ten sixty six and all that' was a popular satirical work in the mid
twentieth century. Even earlier satirical work (Frenzied Fiction) came
from Stephen Leacock, a Toronto based mathematician. Following the
recent terrorist bombings in London (Al Qaida, not Fenian) the usual
suspects from emerged from under their stones to call for a more
patriotic version of history to be taught to young people in Britain's
multicultural society. Plus ca change! Nearly a hundred years ago
Stephen Leackock amused his audience with an aside on a young man
studying Turkish, Music and Religion, and career prospects as a
choirmaster in a Turkish cathedral. The debate on appropriate
university courses is very old indeed.
1066 starts with the death of King Harold following his taking an an
arrow in the eye. 1906 could start not with the death of a king, but
the death of a scientist. The French military is involved in both
stories. Pierre Curie was run down by a horsedrawn vehicle belonging to
the French army, right in the centre of Paris. His successor, his wife,
got Nobel prizes for chemistry and physics.
Bang, crash, wallop! Cartoon of man being hit by vehicle. Not a
battle scene, but nevertheless a common enough death scene.
Chemistry scores in this history with the story of Haber, the
development of synthetic ammonia, and then experiments with war gas
during the battle of Tannenburg (1914). Follow up with Lloyd George's
explosives crisis and Chaim Wiezmann's solution, leading to the Balfour
Declaration. Fast forward to the banning of acetone in drug war
stratagy and the use of acetone peroxide in terrorist bombings much
later.
Physics scores in the nuclear bomb industry.
Don't leave out commercial electronics. AT&T was a kingmaker of
sorts. Their decision to pass on German messages to British code
breakers was described as crucial in bringing America into the First
World War, following the 'Zimmerman Telegram' (Barbara Tuchman).
Deal with the celebrities: Leni Reifenstal, Meiling Soong (Madame
Chiang Kai Shek), Mahatma Gandhi the agitator, Hitler and his terrible
doctors, Stalin (make sure he's dead), Tojo, Roosevelt, Churchill a
great failure for much of his life, and Mao Tse Tung 'sorted' by Jung
Chang.
Describe 'Death Factories'. The two obvious answers are Auschwitz
and Unit 731 in Harbin. There were many others, including Bophal. Death
railways were already feature of the 19th century life.
1980s Cover the Great English Miner's strike. Leslie Boulton.
New Millenium: Millenium bug swindle, dot.com bubble, Nepali Royal
Family Massacre, and finally the planes crashing into New York
skyscrapers.
NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
Hitler eliminates Ernst Roehm and the SA. See Heinrich Hohne's book
about the SS. 30 June 1934. Albert Speer describes the nervous tension
in Hitler just before the act of flying to Bavaria.
HARRY POTTER
A Beslan terrorist attack survivor cites 'Harry Potter' novels as an
inspiration to hang in tough. The 'Harry Potter' phenomenon is not solely
an artifact of millionairess JK Rowling. You get similar wishful thinking
on most computer systems nowadays. An animated wizard points out how to
install some kludgy new software, but hold your breath and make sure the
feng shui is right otherwise you will have to reinstall.
THE DISMAL SCIENCE
John Maynard Keynes
John von Neumann
Morgenstein
Amartya Sen Witnessed Bengal Famine
Al Huq Human Development Index
Economics has seen a clash of cultures since the days of Marx
and Malthus. Malthus eventually wound up being cossetted by the
moguls of the East India Company, while Marx refused to get a
job and lived with his family in great penury. For a long time
the two points of view of these men remained irreconcilable until
the death of Mao Tse Tung when the Marxist oriented Chinese
Communist Party decided that Malthus was right and instituted the
one child policy to save their own skins. The Chinese leadership
at the time wondered whether the cohort from the 50s and 60s
would welcome their hardly existant economic gains being eroded
by the sort of population growth found in Nigeria or India. These
late 1970s leaders feared social turmoil if the population grew
too fast so they used a mixture of reward and punishment to
administer planned population growth.
In the twentieth century the advantages of a planned economy
became evident to many. Wartime leader Lloyd George anticipated
both Lenin and Trotsky in actually trying to put the planned economy
into practice.
Lenin's Revolutionary Russia became a source of emulation. In
the popular imagination Lenin became a sort of rightful caliph to
succeed the prophet Marx. Ambitious projects to reform the world
economy are still around. The UN Millennium summit of 2000 endorsed
environmental sustainabilty or the sort of economy where input
and output are evenly balanced, and where constraints imposed by
limitations of natural resources have to be taken into account by
all planners including those working for neo-con governments.
MAKE SURE HE'S DEAD
'Make sure he's dead': attitude amongst Stalin's entourage after his
stroke.
DON'T LAUGH
'Don't Laugh': instruction to Chinese crowds forced to attend rally
celebrating Stalin.
'Don't Laugh': Hamas response to killing of their chief bomb maker
when he used an over-smart mobile phone. In fact the mobile phone was
not really smart, but it was controlled by Israelis and their agents.
Mobile phones may have been used by radical leaders but there was a
price to pay. Mobile phone use subjects an ibdividual to precise
tracking. Chechen warlord, Doudayev was killed by a guided missile
which homed onto his mobile phone.
SAUDI ARABIA
During the 1980s the Americans placed people in all the key Saudi
ministries, but later on they got nine-eleven. The Americans were meant
to be running the place, but in the end they said most 9/11 hijackers
were Saudi. Michael Moore made a film about the relationship between the
Bush administration and the Saudi Royals. The links between Texas and
the Arab Peninsula (al Jazira) go back to the time of the Getty oil
empire. Harry St. John Philby was a key advisor to the Saud family
from about 1916 until the Second World War when he was unceremoniously
bundled out of the country for being too anti-British.
FRANCE
Les banliuex brulent. November 2005.
Following tough speaches and tough legislation law and order fanatic
Sarkozy has created a new class of 'enrages'. The dissaffected youth of
mainly North African areas are fed up with perceived injustice and
deprivation. Law and order governments do not create social harmony.
They often just amplify racism, and often encourage institutions founded
on racist precepts. Just like Sarkozy, Taksin Sinawat is a law and order
man, being a former policeman. South Thailand is now militarized rather
like an oriental version of Ulster. The new revolts are often
coordinated by mobile phone, with the science fiction concepts of the
1950s being turned into channels for the ultra-violent revolutionaries
and members of professional armies to glorify their own warlike actions.
Some urban gangs go around assaulting people just to transmit video
footage of a beating.
AUTHORS CONSULTED
Albert Speer Inside the Third Reich
Antonia Fraser Persecution.
Victor Klemperer Dresden 1945
Ian Kershaw Hitler
Iris Chang Nanjing Massacre
Jung Chang China & Mao
Kurt Vonnegut Dresden 1945
Barbara Tuchman 1914, 1918, Zimmerman Telegram
Linda Colley Questions on imperialism.
Noam Chomsky Deception of the masses
Heinrich Hohne Hitler's SS
Stehen Leacock Historical Satire
Steven Rose Biotechnology developments
Simon Singh Maths and science including recent trends.
Hugh Trevor Roper Last Days of Hitler, Persecution.
Frederick Pohl Bad side of capitalism.
Alexandre Solzhenitsin Stalin's Russia.
Karl Popper Roots of totalitarianism
William Shirer Afghanistan, Hitler
Lloyd George Acetone, Chaim Weizman, Balfour Declaration.
T.E.Lawrence Arabia, 1914-18
Tsuji Masanubo The Malaya campaign 1941-1942.
PEOPLE
Leslie Boulton Great English Miner's Strike 1983-84
INTERNET SITES
Natural Resources Defence Council Carbon Club Rankings